_Fur_Trade__Native_Disruptive_by_European

The fishing industry was the beginning of the fur trade in Canada, in the areas of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the early 1500's the profitability of the fur trade brought more and more settlers and trappers to Canada from the European countries. This trade closely engaged the Native peoples who would hunt the beavers and other animals and then sell their pelts to Europeans in exchange for gun, textile and beads. The fur trade provided was an incentive for expanding European claims over native lands, and for the Roman Catholic Church to convert the natives to join Christianity. Those were major disruptions for native society. However, in today's world, we would see that, trade was a way to forge coalition and sustain good relations between different cultures. Land was cleared for settlements and the supply of the fur bearing animals was threatened. As a result, the harvesting of fur bearing animals, through hunting and trapping, created a decline in the animal population. The fur trade brought Indians useful items; it also caused them suffering through the introduction of disease, firearms, loss of culture, and loss of a territory. The fur trade caused a huge impact on social and economic development. Economically, there were conflict between Britain and France, the British launch station in the Hudson River Valley; it was a competition with the French of who would control the trade operation industry in the central interior territory. Native were disruptive foreigner took control of their land and started to fight between themselves. For instance, an economic historian Harold Innis argued that, "the fur trade gave Canada its' present boundaries in the beginning of 16th century, in the search for fur especially beaver." Socially, Indian women got involved in fur trade industry. At the time when foreigner trader men came to the new world and the majority of them were singles. As a result, Indian women became trader's wives. There are motives for married native women were to performed valuable work, such as teaching the traders the customs and the language of the First Nations. Nor' Wester Daniel Harmon voiced the widely held opinion that most of the Indian women were "better pleased to remain with the white People than with their own Relations, while his contemporary George Nelson affirmed "some too would even desert to live with the white" (65). The fur trader's settlers disrupted the first nation's religious culture. The first major religious group to immigrate to the new world was Roman Catholic. Many other colonists also came to North America searching for the right to practice their religion and tried to persuade the aboriginal people to convert to Christianity. The fur trade also had many other negative effects on the Northwest Coast Indians. Their health was impaired by alcohol and tobacco, and in some cases their land was stolen from them. But most damaging of all was their introduction to European diseases. European diseases such as small pox were particularly deadly to the natives and became one of the reasons the Huron agreed to convert. This disease killed more than half the Huron population, particularly the elders and children. As a result, many old people who had died were the most proficient Huron leaders and craftsmen; also they were familiar with the Native culture experience. On the other hand children death reduced the population of the men fighters in the next generation. The French not only wanted the Huron to convert to Christianity but had economic motives as well. The French noted that, Huronia was the centre of the trading. However, in 1960, the serious illnesses in Huronia were over. Finally, the European colonization of the Indian forever changed the lives and culture of the Native people. The end of the fur trade as an important force in Canadian developed history.